


too busy dancing (to get knocked off our feet)

by CrimsonPetrichor



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Green Gables Fables
Genre: Gen, Major spoilers for Anne of the Island, Spoilers for Anne of Avonlea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 18:24:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4575057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimsonPetrichor/pseuds/CrimsonPetrichor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten little ficlets from the GGF-verse (and maybe an AU or two?), each one brought to you by a Taylor Swift lyric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. all the mountains we moved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been pulling together ideas for this collection all summer, but now I'm going to try and get all ten of them out to you guys before September 2nd. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> (Also, this particular chapter does contain a fairly big spoiler for _Anne of the Island_ , so if you haven't gotten around to reading it yet, you might want to skip this one.)

_"I've had the time of my life fighting dragons with you."_  
Taylor Swift, "Long Live"

* * *

 

It’s Ruby who brings them together one last time. Josie says she’s being obsessive about it, trying to work around everyone’s schedules and make everything perfect, but Ruby insists that she's not being unreasonable. She just _knows_ , okay?

She knows that Josie will give up frappucinos for a year if it means that she can save enough for a semester abroad in Paris. She knows that Vancouver will only be Jane’s first stop on her world-saving mission. She knows that Anne and Gilbert will eventually find their way to each other. She knows that nothing will ever be quite the same. And that’s good, she hurriedly adds as she explains herself to Josie. Change is good. But before all that change happens, Ruby wants one night where things stay the same.

She organizes it meticulously, summoning everyone to a field on the outskirts of town just before sunset one July evening. She doesn’t give them any details, just assigns them things to bring and makes them all promise to be there. (That last part might possibly have involved Ruby staking a claim on some people’s firstborns if they didn't show up. She didn't plan on it, but she kind of got swept up with her character.)

When her friends arrive, they're greeted by the sight of her stoking a huge bonfire, a series of speakers blaring pop music into the otherwise-still night.

"Ruby, are you sure this is safe?" Gilbert asks as he, Anne, and Jane get out of his car.

She tosses her hair, prodding decisively at the flames. "It's a bonfire pit, Gilbert. It's _made_ for this. Plus, I have sand and a fire extinguisher, so it's all under control."

Gil grins. "I didn't mean the pit. I meant you dancing to Taylor Swift with a flaming stick in your hand. Wasn't your dancing dangerous enough without adding pyrotechnics?"

Ruby's only answer is to throw a bag of marshmallows at Gilbert's head that Jane catches on the rebound. Beside them, Anne collapses into giggles.

"So did you want me to put these somewhere?" Jane asks, laughing at Gilbert's mock-offended face.

"There's a table thing over there," Ruby laughs, gesturing to the other side of the bonfire with her makeshift fire poker.

The 'table thing', they soon see, is one of those folding card tables that seems at risk of buckling under its own weight -- or at least the weight of all the snacks, half of which seem to be a variety of icing-covered baked goods.

"Ruby, did you make all of these?" Anne asks, her eyes widening.

"Josie helped."

Josie snorts, setting a box of graham crackers on the table. "Yeah, if by 'helped', you mean I iced like three sugar cookies while she charmed Nate into lending her his pickup truck. This was all Ruby. I don't even know when she last slept. Whenever I've texted her for the past week, she's been awake and in full planning mode."

Ruby shrugs, standing up and setting down her erstwhile fire poker. "I needed something to do now that student council is over. I just can't not have a project to work on."

The explanation is breezy as ever, but Anne thinks she sees dark circles under Ruby's eyes, a slight strain in her smile as she points out Tristan's approaching car. Then the fire casts its light elsewhere and Ruby's grin turns bright and sincere and Anne can't be sure of what she saw or didn't see.

"Of course I invited him, Jane," Ruby is saying. "I know his school probably had like, a yacht party to celebrate graduation, but he's your best friend. I thought you might want him here."

Jane smiles and thanks Ruby sincerely before going to greet Tristan.

"Diana's coming, too," Ruby says, turning to Anne. "And Fred, so I can finally see how cute they are in person."

"Fair warning," says Gilbert, "they're pretty darn cute."

Anne hums in agreement. "Possibly too cute, actually, but we love them anyway."

\------- 

They don't really do much, in retrospect. They just sit around the bonfire and talk and gorge themselves on sugar, but really, that's enough.

Ruby and Josie and Jane toss out embarrassing stories from their shared childhoods. They're helped along by Ruby's carefully curated playlist, which includes -- among other things -- the entire High School Musical soundtrack, some choice selections from the Jonas Brothers' self titled album, and a recording of Ruby and Josie's slightly-pitchy-but-overall-not-awful duet of "Our Song" from a grade school talent show.

Fred and Gilbert dramatically reenact the story of Cedric Von Schnifflebitz, Fred taking on the role of Gilbert with gusto and doing a remarkable impression of the casual-yet-suave hair flips that anyone from Avonlea High recognizes as the opening gambit of the Gilbert Blythe Charm Offensive. (Given that hockey requires helmets, it's likely that Fred ad-libbed at least ten of his twelve hair flips, but it added believability to his performance.)

This all somehow leads to Diana and Gilbert facing off in a competition where the goal seems to be dropping as many Doctor Who references as possible in the space of a single sentence. (The dark horse winner is Tristan, of all people, who apparently enjoyed the first season of the Doctor Who revival because of its 'indie carnivalesque sci-fi aesthetic'.)

The conversation peters out after a while, though, and they enjoy each other's company in relative silence as Ruby turns up the music and Josie passes around the stuff for s'mores.

Anne is focusing on evenly toasting a marshmallow -- "It's an art!" she protests when Gilbert teases her for her intense concentration -- when the next track on Ruby's playlist makes Diana sigh, "Oh, I love this song."

Ruby is the first to start singing along, but it's Gilbert who joins her when her voice goes shaky at the end of the second verse, like they've rehearsed this duet a million times.

(And they have. With Josie away that summer, Gilbert was the first to see Ruby at the beginning of her _Wicked_ obsession. He'd heard the songs, learned the words, and memorized the plot before finally getting to see the show a year later. He didn't have any other choice, really. Ruby Gillis was a force of nature. She still is.)

The subsequent rendition of 'For Good' is somewhere between touching and hilarious. Ruby's lovely voice stands out against Gilbert's committed and very squeaky Kristin Chenoweth impression, but somehow they don't sound bad. The profound emotion might be slightly marred by giggles when Ruby tries to pull Gil to his feet and nearly falls over, but by the end, most of them have suspiciously misty eyes. It only takes a half second after they sing the final line for Gilbert and Ruby to become the center of a group hug that nearly topples them both over.

When they all separate and flop back into their seats, Ruby looks up at the sky and silently notifies the universe that things are officially allowed to change now.

They do.

\------- 

 It's Ruby who brings them together again, exactly a year later.

The evening might be less-than-meticulously planned, but they manage.

Diana cranks up the Taylor Swift until Jane gets the bonfire to light and Josie takes the lead on teasing Anne and Gil over their handholding. They share stories and joke with each other and toast the girl who brought them all there, present even in her absence.

(They go quiet for a little while after that, feeling too grown up and too young all at the same time. Then Jane throws a marshmallow at Gilbert for being too maudlin during his toast and it lands perfectly in his hair and as they all burst into laughter, Josie swears she hears her best friend's laugh caught up with the others.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tentative title for this chapter was _"The Irony of Narratively Connecting Ruby Gillis to a Song Called Long Live", by Fall Out Boy_ but then I changed it because it made me sad. 
> 
> Let me know what you thought!


	2. i wonder if you know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your lovely comments on the last chapter! Hopefully this one will remedy some of the pain I caused you all.
> 
> Please let me know what you think, if only to justify the weird amount of time I spent researching the plants that commonly grow in Saskatchewan to ensure this chapter's accuracy.
> 
> Enjoy!

_"I'm trying so hard not to get caught up now."_  
Taylor Swift, 'Fearless'

* * *

 

He walks her home.

There's a wedding -- their sort-of boss's wedding, if you want to be particular about it -- and it's the kind of summer evening that Avonlea does so well, where the scent of lilies hangs in the air and the sun sets slowly. Anne spends at least half of the reception standing by the bay windows and mentally waxing poetic about how pretty it all is, wishing that she'd somehow squeezed a notebook into the tiny beaded bag that she brought. (She could, of course, record her metaphors on her phone, but that would just take all the romance out of it.)

Gil notices her at some point, figures out the reason behind the wistful glances outside. As soon as they can politely duck out of the party, he suggests that she accompany him on his walk home -- so that she can protect him, he explains, from any ruffians and/or scalawags that he might encounter. She teases him about forgetting his frying pan at home but agrees to join him anyway, letting him hold the door for her as they slip out into the parking lot.

They joke with each other as they leave the hotel behind them, Gil bringing up Paul Irving’s undeniable infatuation with Anne, which came to a head when the little boy very primly requested a dance from ‘Miss Shirley’ earlier this evening. Gilbert can’t stop laughing about it, but Anne swats his arm, biting back her own smile.

“What?” she asks. “Is it so ridiculous that someone might want to dance with me?”

(Gilbert of four months ago would have faltered at that and sputtered some barely witty answer before changing the subject, but this Gilbert has had six months of being friends with Anne Shirley.

This Gilbert doesn’t get distracted by the way her hair looks in the sunlight or freeze up when she falls asleep on his shoulder. This Gilbert catches himself before he gets caught staring, knows to let Anne draw the lines exactly where she needs them to be. This Gilbert is more affected by the stillness of the evening and the sound of her laugh than he has ever been before, but he knows how to hide it.)

He arches an eyebrow at Anne, grinning. “When that someone is seven years old and half your height? It’s a little ridiculous, yeah.”

“Well, I will have you know that Paul Irving was an excellent dancer,” Anne says loftily.

"He did recover pretty well when he realized there was no way for him to execute the waltz that he had undoubtedly dreamed of dancing with you."

"Which is a good thing, considering the fact that I can't waltz at all, height difference or not."

"I'll teach you sometime."

The clicking of Anne's high heels stops abruptly as she turns to stare at him. "You can _waltz_?"

"Only in theory, really," Gilbert says. "And I'm extremely rusty."

She raises her eyebrows.

He sighs. "Yes, okay, I can waltz. We all can, actually. The summer before grade nine, Mrs. Lynde organized a session of ballroom dancing classes for we _wayward Avonlea youths_. She thought we weren't cultured enough. I wasn't going to do it, but then Ruby conned me and pretty much the whole rest of the grade into signing up."

"And have you waltzed even once since then?"

"Once with Josie at Ruby's fifteenth birthday party, which was literally a ball and, as I'm just realizing, probably the only reason why she got so invested in all of us taking the class together. Oh, and once I waltzed for thirty seconds with a little cousin who was watching _The Sound of Music_ and wanted to dance like Maria, but she's four so we were adorable instead of ridiculous," he says, looking pointedly at Anne.

She rolls her eyes at him, but Gilbert sees the beginning of a smile in the quirk of her lips.

(Somewhere in the back of his mind, the smile gets chalked up as a victory. It’s an instinct that he tries his best to quash, left over from the time when getting even half a smile from her was a hard earned step on the way to common ground. Anne was never a prize to be won; he’s always known that. It was just a way to mark his progress as he fixed the damage he’d done and now it’s a reflex that he’s trying to unlearn.)

They walk on in companionable silence.

Anne makes a game of dodging the trees’ shadows on the sidewalk and Gil joins in without being asked. Gil taps her arm to signal a shortcut through the prettiest neighborhood in town and they wordlessly agree to slow down so Anne can admire the gardens.

In the end, it’s Anne who breaks the silence first. She’s staring at a small rosebush as she speaks.

“I was just thinking,” she says slowly, “it's amazing that they found each other, but there’s been so much heartbreak in Mr. Irving and Miss Lavendar’s lives.”

She pauses. He waits.

“I used to think that stories like theirs were romantic, you know? I probably read too many Gothic novels in my formative years, but it seemed like my life would be hopelessly boring unless things like that happened.”

“And now? No more plans to find someone’s secret wife in an attic somewhere?”

Anne shrugs. “Now I don't know. It just seems like they went through so much unnecessary pain. Maybe it would have been better if there had never been so many miscommunications in the first place.”

“It wouldn’t have made for as good a story, though,” says Gilbert. “I mean, I don’t know about you, but I personally enjoy telling people that the first time I met one of my best friends, she hit me over the head with a magnetic locker board.”

She laughs at that, shaking her head as she straightens up. "We should get going."

Anne takes the next few steps so quickly that Gil has to jog to stop her. "Wait," he says, "you haven't seen the best part of this neighborhood yet."

"There's a best part of this neighborhood?"

"In my most humble opinion, yes. Come on."

"I would call your opinions a lot of things," says Anne as she follows him, "but humble is not one of them."

"Well then, in my conceited opinion. Either way, it's worth the detour."

They stop in front of a house separated from the rest of the neighborhood by a massive and well-manicured lawn.

Anne starts to ask if this is it, but Gilbert grabs her hand and pulls her along the side of the lawn to the house's backyard. "If I had known that this evening would involve trespassing, I'd have worn better shoes," Anne says flatly.

"It's barely trespassing," Gilbert says. "I've known the Pyes since I was three."

"The Pyes? This is Josie's house?"

"Yeah, but we're not here for the house."

"Then what are we- oh. Oh, it's _beautiful_."

They've stopped on the very edge of the Pye property, where a willow tree the size of the neighboring houses marks the border. Its leaves sweep the ground, branches swishing in the breeze.

Anne stares up at it, eyes wide with wonder, until she hears Gil say, "Come on, Shirley."

When she turns to him, he's pushing aside the curtain of leaves and ducking inside. She stops to give the tree one more glance, then follows him in.

It's another world, green and still and perfect. Gilbert is leaning against the tree trunk, looking incredibly pleased with himself. He doesn't speak or rush her along. He just waits for her to observe what surrounds her.

(Okay, so he points out the carvings on the trunk, but it's getting darker and they're becoming harder to see and a hundred years' worth of hearts and initials really shouldn't be missed.)

Anne traces the knots and carvings in the wood with her fingertips, tilts her head back to see the canopy of leaves as she moves around the trunk. She stops to examine one of the carved hearts when she catches a glimpse of Gilbert looking up, a small smile on his face. He’s known about this tree his whole life, she realizes, seen it for years, and he’s still fascinated by it.

Maybe there’s beauty in that, too, she thinks. It’s not dramatic like the Irvings’ story, but maybe there’s something to be said for finding wonder in the things you know by heart. Maybe there are things that you miss out on when you decide that you know something like the back of your hand.

The thought makes her breath catch in her throat for a second and she’s not sure why.

“Ready to go?” asks Gil from across the tree trunk.

She shakes her head a little. “Not just yet.”

He waits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the closest I'll get to a straight adaptation of a scene from the books, I think, but I just couldn't help myself. I hope I did it justice. 
> 
> If anyone wants a justification for why I slightly tweaked Anne's position on the Irvings' love from what it is at the end of _Anne of Avonlea_ , I'll gladly provide the full one, but the short version is that I felt that this was a different Anne and I think GGF Anne is visibly dynamic enough to merit a little bit of an update to her perspective.


	3. sitting here planning my revenge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a month! 
> 
> I have a million excuses, but the important thing is that I'm back and this fic will not be abandoned. Hopefully.
> 
> Thank you, everyone, for the wonderful feedback on the last two chapters! If you have the chance, let me know what you thought of this one as well!

_"I realize you love yourself more than you could ever love me."_  
Taylor Swift, "Picture to Burn"

* * *

 

" _The Notebook_ always makes me so proud to be a Canadian."

Ruby turns to face Josie, her spoonful of ice cream threatening to ruin the carpet as she levels a baffled look at her best friend. "What?"

"Um, Rachel McAdams? Canadian. Ryan Gosling? Canadian. Canada made this movie possible. If it wasn't for Canada, _The Notebook_ would probably have starred, like, Katherine Heigl, and nobody would have watched it."

"Excuse me," Ruby says indignantly, "I happen to enjoy Katherine Heigl's movies."

"Movie. You like _one_ Katherine Heigl movie, and it's _27 Dresses_ , and the real reason why you like it is James Marsden."

"Hey! That's-" Ruby pauses, considering it for a moment, and falters. "That's pretty true, now that I think about it."

Josie laughs and flicks a piece of popcorn at her best friend. Onscreen, Noah and Allie dance under a streetlight and Ruby lets out a dreamy sigh, too transfixed on the TV to even bother brushing the kernel out of her hair.

It's eight twenty-seven. That means it's been a half hour since Ruby last stared off into space, stewing over the events of her afternoon instead of paying attention to Josie's carefully curated visual distractions. She'd spent at least half of _The Princess Diaries 2_  staring intently at the wall next to the TV, so this is an improvement, but it's just a matter of time, really. At some point, they'll run out of sugar to eat and movies to watch and there won't be anything to stop Ruby from hearing that jerk's voice on a loop in her head.

Josie's fist clenches at the thought of him, the grade twelve boy toy who'd turned out to be a grade-A jackass. It's not even anger, Josie realizes as she shakes the now-squished popcorn off her hand. It's guilt.

It's her job to protect Ruby; it always has been. It's not that Ruby can't take care of herself, or that she's silly or naive or anything else that that unwashed James Franco wannabe called her.

Ruby just...she walks around with open hands. She forgets that for every person who takes your hand, there's another who'll hand you a stick of dynamite and disappear.

So Josie does what she can -- steers Ruby away from the TNT, lays down cushions to soften the occasional fall. It's all in the best friend job description and really, she's the best there is.

Somehow, though, she missed this one. It's like she confused a -- what's that thing that's always falling in cartoons? anvil? -- an anvil for a snowflake. Sure, he'd been kind of pretentious, but he was a writer. Ruby was enamored with how he quoted Fitzgerald off the top of his head, and though it had sounded super rehearsed, Josie didn't interfere. He seemed nice enough at the time.

In the end, all it takes for the sensitive writer act to fall away is three weeks and a piece of constructive criticism. Ruby suggests some change to a line of poetry and it sets him off on a rant about mainstream culture and stupid immature little girls who would never 'get' true art, all in the middle of the Starbucks parking lot.

Josie, who'd tagged along for a latte, takes Ruby's arm and leads her away without a second thought. Her only regret is that, in the heat of the moment, she can't come up with a better exit line than, "Oh, and by the way? Everyone knows that your 'weed' is just oregano, you _phony_."

(She's sure it broke his heart to hear Holden Whatever-field's favorite insult used against him, but she really wishes she'd been able to say something a little more devastating. Unfortunately, three weeks in his company and the only personality traits that she can read from him are music hipster, coffee hipster, and book hipster, so there isn't a lot to work with.)

\----

When Josie looks over at her best friend, Ruby's staring at the wall again, her shoulders slumped as she hugs her knees to her chest.

It's not enough, Josie decides. It’s not enough to just walk away from the guy in a Starbucks parking lot. Ruby needs closure, and closure means revenge.

(For the record, Josie’s aware that ‘closure’ could actually mean any number of things. It’s just that when you’re a sexist jerk, you shouldn’t get to explain yourself.)

She throws a mini candy bar into Ruby’s lap to shake her out of her reverie without embarrassing her, then grabs the notepad from the coffee table and starts sketching out her idea. It takes Josie two Nanaimo bars and the second half of the movie to come up with a solid plan, but when she has it, it’s airtight.

Unsurprisingly, convincing Ruby to help her is the hardest part. After at least twenty minutes of debate about why two wrongs don’t make a right, Josie plays her final card.

“This isn’t just about you, Ruby. This is about all of us,” she says. “He thinks that just because we like clothes and Starbucks, we’re somehow not as good as him. That doesn’t just affect you. That affects like, everyone he’s ever going to deal with. And on behalf of all those poor, unfortunate people, I think it’s time that we teach him a lesson.”

Ruby stops to think about it, and Josie knows she’s finally taking this seriously because she pauses the One Direction movie before giving her answer.

“Fine,” she says. “Fine, okay, we’ll do it. What did you have in mind?”

And as Josie describes her plan, laying out supply lists and maps and a schedule for how they’ll get everything done in twenty-two minutes flat, Ruby seems to sit up a little straighter, her eyes a little brighter as she takes it all in.

“How do you know all this? Did you actually research it all?” Ruby asks, looking from the meticulous plan to Josie to the plans again.

Josie holds up her phone. “I just texted some people.”

“Have you considered a career in taking over the world?”

“Thought about it. Too much work, not enough free time.”

Laughing, Ruby picks up the map and points out their target. “Okay, so explain to me again how we’re going to get here?”

She listens intently as Josie talks through how they’ll sneak out of the house and cut across to the neighbors’ place, where an old soccer teammate has volunteered to be their getaway driver and provide them with extra supplies.

“Extra supplies?” Ruby interrupts. “What could we possibly need more of?” She's gesturing over Josie's head, at the art supply closet that her mother has accumulated over seventeen years of arts and crafts and home-sewn Halloween costumes.

“Frosting, mostly. And pom-poms...and glitter...and lipstick.”

“ _What_ did I agree to?”

“Just trust me," Josie says.

So Ruby does.

\----

The story breaks the next day, with a picture tweeted out by another one of Josie’s old soccer teammates.

On a pristine suburban driveway sits wannabe-Franco’s light brown sedan, made up like an oversized, sprinkle covered doughnut. Bright pink frosting runs along the sides, hood, and trunk, with tiny sparkly things stuck to it and looking for all the world like rainbow sprinkles.

Another member of Josie’s extensive phone tree tweets a different set of pictures: close ups of the headlights, which have been made up with googly eyes and pipe cleaners to look like eyes fringed by pretty eyelashes. That one gets thirty retweets in five minutes.

The last pictures, taken just before the damage is finally noticed by the car’s owner, are of the windows and windshield. Someone has scrawled quotes from Salinger and Hemingway and Fitzgerald across each window in bright pink lipstick. On the windshield is a re-creation of a Banksy piece, a small stick figure reaching for a heart-shaped balloon in fuchsia and orange-y red. Nate texts them to Ruby during breakfast, the message underneath reading “whoever did this is a GENIUS. he totally deserved it”.

It makes Ruby snort super unattractively into her juice and Josie laughs out loud as she passes her best friend a napkin.

And that, she thinks, is how to be the best in the best friend business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen you guys, I just love Ruby and Josie so much. _So much._


	4. it feels like a perfect night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So these chapters were all supposed to be standalones, but the idea wouldn't leave me alone, so here's a short follow-up to my fake dating AU, _[something good and right and real](http://http://archiveofourown.org/works/3793603)_.
> 
> You can probably figure out what's going on in the fic without having read it ("fake dating" is the key here, really), but if you've got the time, you should hit the link and give it a read and I promise it will make this fic just the teensiest bit more enjoyable.
> 
> Also, there's a spoiler warning on here for _Anne of the Island_. If you haven't read it or don't know what happens, just give this one a miss. (And maybe start Anne of the Island?)

_"Everything will be alright if you keep me next to you."_  
Taylor Swift, "22"

* * *

 

Anne looks around her and catalogues everything one last time. Drinks, check. Napkins, check.

"But there are so many other things to do! We could go see a movie or we could get ice cream or we could even hide in the depths of the library because we miss the malnourished vampire aesthetic of finals week."

Boyfriend who is an adult by law but apparently a three year old by choice? Check.

Gilbert has developed an exhaustive ‘things to do in Avonlea that are not a picnic’ list and has been attempting all morning to sell Anne on at least one of the options.

"Or we could go to that retro arcade or Fred was talking about a carnival being in town this weekend-" he’s saying when Anne cuts him off.

"A carnival in town? As in ‘in Regina’?"

He shrugs. "It's only a short drive."

"Gil, it's ninety minutes on a good day. Saturday morning on the weekend of a carnival does not count as a good day." She decides then that she can’t resist poking the bear, so she adds, “And besides, then we’d miss the picnic.”

"Which is why I’m saying, what if we just didn't go?"

Anne raises her eyebrows at Gilbert, crossing her arms. "What if we just didn't go to _our own picnic_ that we _invited people to_? Is that what you're asking me?"

Gilbert mimics her stance. "What I'm asking you, Miss Shirley, is what if we just didn't go to our own confrontation-disguised-as-a-picnic? You can pack it in a wicker basket with an unnecessary amount of Mason jars of you want, but I think I know an Anne Shirley scheme when I see one."

"I have no idea what you're referring to," she says, suddenly busy stacking and re-stacking the paper cups.

"No? So there's no reason why you packed bottles of that weird unsweetened goji berry tea that Ruby likes?"

"They were on sale," says Anne primly.

"And the One Direction napkins?"

"Those, too."

"And you baked and packed two dozen of her favorite cookies because what, a stray breeze flipped your cookbook to that page?"

"Maybe I di- wait, how did you know that they were Ruby's favorite cookies?"

"I may have snuck one when you weren't looking? But I'm not the one on trial here!" he adds as she narrows her eyes at him. "One of us is leading Ruby into a picnic that is a spiderweb of flattery and deceit and brown sugar, and you know what? It's not me."

"A spiderweb of brown sugar," Anne repeats flatly.

"And deceit," says Gilbert, nodding.

She just shakes her head at him, tucking the last of the food into the basket and flipping its lid shut. "So are you going to tell me the real reason why you don't want to do this? Or am I going to have to torture it out of you, because I have my _Collected TS Eliot_ here and I'm not above reading selections from 'The Waste Land' at a glacial pace until you crack."

"I feel like that'd be as painful for you as it would be for me."

"That's ridiculous; everyone knows the only way to truly enjoy a poem is to read it out loud," Anne says. She taps on the cover of the anthology, which she conjured up from one of the drawers in front of her without even looking.  "And don't change the subject."

Gilbert is intently folding a napkin into a fan, and for quiet moment Anne thinks that he might not say anything at all. Then, more to the countertop than to her, he says, "I'm scared of Ruby."

"Ruby?" Anne asks. "Our Ruby? Who crafts and runs charity bake sales on the weekends?"

"Not _physically_. It's not like I think she's going to beat me up or anything." He only meets Anne's eyes for a second before shrugging and looking down again. "I just- I don't want to disappoint her."

Anne’s shoulders stiffen. For a second she feels like the outsider again, like she might still be inconvenience instead of a member of the family she found here. She knows in the back of her mind that it’s silly and untrue, but it sends a chill up her spine all the same. "You think us being together will disappoint Ruby?" she asks, keeping her voice light.

Gilbert sees through it anyway, his hand coming to rest on top of hers. "I think us being together will make her ridiculously smug," he says. "I think it's more the month we spent lying to her about being in a relationship that'll disappoint her."

"And the year and a half after that when we didn't bother telling her that none of it was true," Anne says helpfully.

Gilbert winces. "And that."

"If it helps anything other than your ego," Anne says slowly, "it wasn't all a lie. You're kind of cute when you're defending the honor of _The Princess Bride_."

He straightens up and preens -- yes, _preens_ , there’s no other way to describe it -- at Anne's words. "Why, Miss Shirley, I had no idea you felt that way back then."

Anne swats him with a tea towel, but he grins down at her and she can't help but return it.

"Now come on," Anne says. "We were always going to tell her eventually, weren't we?"

"Of course."

"Then it's time we came clean. We almost didn't get the chance to at Christmas. I don't want to risk that again."

"Right," he says. "And she's out of the woods now, so..."

"So we tell her and we let her give us the silent treatment for five minutes and-"

"And then we tell her that you _pined_ for me the entire time and fell in love with my deeply-held convictions on Gingerbread Lattes and wanted to answer all my requests with 'as you wish', and then she forgives us because we weren't really faking."

"Excuse you, Gilbert Blythe. I did not pine over anyone."

"Wait, so are you admitting to the other thing? Because if my opinions on Starbucks drinks are what brought us together, I have to admit that I cheated on the Gingerbread Latte with a Peppermint Mocha Twist last Christmas and it was really good."

Anne just rolls her eyes at him, lifting the basket across the counter and heading for the door.

"Come on, Blythe!" she calls over her shoulder. "We have to do this, remember? Together or not at all."

He catches up with her at the door, holding it open so she can haul the basket out to the car.

Together, he thinks. Where he and Anne Shirley are concerned, he will always pick 'together'.

("Hey, Shirley," he says, handing her his phone as they walk to his car. "Since you're going to commandeer the radio anyway, could we maybe try to find a happy medium between Taylor Swift and mariachi-backed indie music from a five-song album?"

She wrinkles her nose at him but nods.

Then, a half-second later and as a grin spreads across her face: "As you wish.")

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What have we learned today, class? That Anne and Gilbert pretending to date is the only way to save Ruby, obviously. Get on that, guys.
> 
> Also, this could potentially have been longer! I wanted so very badly to include Ruby and her reaction in this but it was reading like a separate fic altogether, so maybe that'll be released into the world another day if someone badgers me into it and I'm ready to part with it.
> 
> As ever, let me know what you thought and thank you for reading!


	5. you live with ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, it's been forever, but this is almost twice the usual length, so that makes up for it, right? I think we opened the floodgates with chapter four's little jaunt into AU territory, because I literally could not help myself with this one.
> 
> So I have another little AU for you today, but this time, with added superpowers! Because every fandom needs a Superman AU.
> 
> This one owes a lot to the show _Smallville_ , and it contains **mentions of genre-typical violence** , so if that's not your cup of tea, skip out on this one and keep an eye out for the next chapter, which will see us return to the real GGF-verse with a healthy dose of fluff.

_"Band-aids don't fix bulletholes."_  
Taylor Swift, "Bad Blood"

* * *

 

There is a list of things that Gilbert expects to encounter in his empty dorm room upon his 3 AM return from the library. His bed, his books, and a half-opened care package from his parents all make the cut. The local vigilante does not.

He almost screams -- yells, maybe? is that more manly? -- when he sees that his room isn’t empty, but then his eyes adjust to the low light and he recognizes her. Her back is to him, but the intruder’s all-black ensemble and bad case of post-cowl hair give it away.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” she says to him, not turning around.

Gilbert drops his bag to the floor, shutting the door behind him. “You know, I'm free for brunch anytime you want to stop giving me heart attacks in the middle of the night.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” she asks.

“I’m pretty sure that you and I have very different definitions of ‘fun’.”

“Ah,” she says, slowly turning to face him. “Well, that just might be a good thing.”

It's a moment that he will never quite get used to.

Gil spends months talking to the vigilante without seeing her face. There are voice modulators and domino masks and shadowy corners of the library that all make her seem more a myth than a person. He names her in one of his articles -- calls her the Sentinel and takes the legend one step further.

Then he finds out that Anne Shirley is the Redmond vigilante, and he gets so caught up in the idea of having a superpowered best friend that he sort of forgets what it means for her. He’s covered Sentinel’s fights; he knows that she sometimes comes out of them with injuries. Still, he never quite gets used to this moment when the shadowy superhero becomes his friend again.

When Anne turns, there’s an oval shaped burn mark on her leggings and a slash running up her right sleeve. With her left hand she holds a compress against her upper arm, and with her right she presses a band-aid onto whatever cut was on her leg. There’s a bruise near her hairline and dirt on her cheek that suggest a face-first run in with the the grass on the quad.

“Shirley, what _happened_ to you?” he asks, kneeling in front of her to get a better look. “I’ve seen you bounce back from falling off a barn roof in half a second; you've never needed any real patching up before.”

Anne shrugs absentmindedly, then lets out a hiss of pain. “The guy I fought...I thought he was just looking to break in and steal stuff from the chem labs, you know? I figured he was a normal burglar, but when I went to take him out, I realized that he was a Kry- I realized that he was like me.” She shifts a little to let Gilbert get a better look at her arm.

He busies himself with gauze and rubbing alcohol. "Is that why you're taking so long to heal? Because he was like you?"

"That and because the sun hasn't risen yet. And, uh, strictly speaking, it's probably more accurate to say that he's better than me."

Gilbert looks up at her, eyebrows furrowed. "Better how?"

She closes her eyes for a minute, massaging her temples. "He can fly."

_"What?"_

"He can fly, Gilbert. Like, up, up, and away, wind rushing through your hair, these-people-look-like-ants flying."

"That's impossible, Anne. People don't fly."

Anne fixes him with a look.

"Okay," he concedes. "Yeah, you exist in this world, ergo nothing is impossible, but Shirley, even you don't fly."

"I can run faster than a speeding bullet and toast a marshmallow with my eyes, but flying is too big a stretch for your imagination?"

“I am a man of science, Anne-”

“I think you gave up that title when you started writing articles for the Redmond Herald about a caped crusader lurking in the shadows, but okay.”

“-and I require proof of these things before I believe them,” he says, ignoring her interruption.

Anne gestures to the grass stains on the side of her face and the now-mostly-healed bruise on her forehead. “What exactly do you think caused these?”

Gil’s lips quirk up into a grin. “What, is that not from your signature move where you run at a careening motor vehicle and stop it with your face?”

“For the last time, I did not _headbutt_ that semi-truck; I stopped it with my shoulders,” she huffs.

He shrugs. “Whatever you say, Shirley.”

She stares at him for a moment, unblinking. “I may refuse to use my powers against you, but I will not hesitate to send a cappella holiday grams to you in every one of your classes for the next four years.”

He gives Anne a long look, trying to gauge whether she's bluffing before he finally nods and says, “Okay. You didn’t headbutt the truck.”

She grins at him. “See? That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

He shakes his head at her. “So if it wasn’t a face off with a truck, what did happen to you?”

“Pretty standard burglary, actually,” Anne says, resting her back against Gil’s bed. “Or it would have been, if he were a human. I cut him off at the lab and knocked him down, but he got back up and then there was some punching and I thought it would be best to superspeed him away to a place where he’d do less damage.”

“So you went for the quad?”

“I kind of just asked myself where the fewest people would be and ran in that general direction. We didn’t make it there, though, because then we were three hundred feet off the ground. That’s when I made the, uh, not-great decision to hit him really hard, and then we both went down like sacks of potatoes.”

“But you were both fine?”

She nods. “Oh, yeah. Then he shot at me and we were less fine, but the fall wasn’t an issue.”

“He shot you?!”

“He shot _at_ me, Gil. There’s a difference.”

“And did he land any of the shots that he took _at_ you?” Gilbert asks, eyeing Anne’s bandaged arm.

“What, this?” she asks, following his gaze. “No, Gil, he cut my arm with a weird pocketknife thing he had. It was made of meteor rock; it wouldn’t have hurt me otherwise. At that point I think he was just desperate to get out of there.”

“Okay,” Gilbert says, his voice steadying. “Okay, good.”

Then Anne adds lightly, “It was my leg that he grazed with the bullet.” 

“What?!” he half-yells, before Anne shushes him. He switches to a whisper but the panic is still there. “How? You’re the girl of steel, and- is that a band-aid? Are you seriously using a band-aid on a bullet wound?”

“It’s barely a scratch, Gil, and you know it’ll heal once I get out into the sun. And besides, I like these Shakespeare band-aids better than the gauze.” The one currently on her leg features the quote ‘What fools these mortals be!’, which feels very relevant after the night she’s had.

Gilbert runs a hand through his hair, still perplexed. “But I don’t understand how a bullet affected you. I thought you were literally bulletproof.”  
****

“Meteor rock bullets,” Anne says. “Pretty clever, actually. They’re equally harmful to humans and people like me.”

But Gilbert looks unconvinced. “Doesn’t that seem a little convenient to you? He has powers like yours, but he chooses to walk right into the lab and steal something on a campus that you patrol? And then when you catch him, he just happens to have two weapons on him that would be lethal to you?”

“He had the upper hand at one point, too,” Anne says slowly. “He could have taken me out, but he didn’t.”

Gil stands up, crossing the room to his desk, where he rifles through some folders before he finds what he’s looking for. He takes a sheet of paper from the stack and a hoodie from his chair, depositing the latter in Anne’s lap.

He pulls a pen from his pocket and circles something on the paper. “So here’s the entrance to the chem labs, on the north end of the old sciences building,” he says. “Where were you before you came to take this guy out?”

Anne gingerly pulls on the sweatshirt as she reviews her patrolling schedule for Thursday nights. “I was probably on the far end of campus, actually,” she says, pointing to a space on the map. “I heard the sound of steel ripping, so I headed in his direction.”

“How long did it take you to get there, if you had to estimate?”

She shrugs her good shoulder. “Gil, you know it takes me less than two seconds to cross campus.”

“And he was still at the door when you got there?”

“Yeah, and then he heard me and turned around and-” she trails off, eyebrows furrowed in thought. “And then he observed me. That’s what he was doing, wasn’t it? He was testing me.”

He nods. “I don’t think he was out to rob the lab at all. They were looking for your response times, your speed, your vulnerabilities...they even tested whether you could fly,” says Gilbert. 

“And I thought Mrs Lynde was nosy.”

“So what are you going to do?” he asks. “A little old fashioned detective work? Review the footage, hunt down the perp, and make him sell out his boss?”

“Well, first of all, I’m going to ban you from watching anymore crime shows on Netflix,” Anne says. “And then I have some calls to make before I do anything about this.”

“Calls? That’s it? What, is there some sort of superhero hotline that connects you to an all-knowing operator?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny your suspicions,” she says, with laughter in her eyes. “And besides, what else would you have me do? Superspeed to some shady bad guy’s lair and just start punching things?”

His grin comes back. “I mean, you could always mix it up by headbutting something.”

Anne swats him with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, faux-scandalized. “Fine, make your snarky comments. I hope you’re prepared to never receive another box of thank-you doughnuts from the vigilante again.”

“If that’s the price of reporting the truth, it’s a price I’m willing to pay.”

She rolls her eyes and stands up, looking towards the window at the slowly-brightening skyline. “I should go; I’ve kept you up long enough.”

“Will you be okay getting back?” he asks, gesturing to her leg.

“I’ll be fine. Get some sleep, Gil.”

And then she’s gone, papers fluttering in her wake. He watches from the window as she breezes down towards her dorm, then collapses on his bed and falls asleep right away.

(A few hours later, he wakes up to a sun-filled room and a bag of doughnuts on his desk, a loopy ‘thank you’ scrawled across the brown paper. He grins at the sight of it, turning towards his window and calling out, “You’re welcome!”

Across campus in her Modern English Poetry lecture, Anne bites back a smile.)

 ****  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have so many other ideas for this universe and they might one day crystallize into another fic, but if you're as excited about it as I am, let me know in the comments or shoot me a message on [Tumblr](http://taxicabsandcupcakes.tumblr.com/ask). I have a million little headcanons that didn't make it into the final draft of this fic and will expound upon them at the drop of a hat.
> 
> Thank you, by the way, for your kind responses on the last chapter, and as ever, let me know what you thought of this one!


	6. i've been loving you for quite some time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this took forever and it's barely 1200 words, but I hope that it's a band-aid on everyone's Shirbert pain and a little bit of a cushion to pad any inevitably crushing events that will go unnamed but are definitely on the horizon.

_"No one else is gonna love me when I get mad, mad, mad."_  
Taylor Swift, "Stay Stay Stay"

* * *

 

“You talk about Gilbert Blythe a lot,” Diana says to Anne one day, like she doesn't already know it.

And she does.

(Know it, that is.)

Anne knows that she talks about Gilbert Blythe a lot because she thinks about him a lot, too.

She thinks about his unnecessary hair flips and his terrible puns and how she'd probably have the most peaceful life in the world if Gilbert Blythe just happened to live anywhere but in Avonlea.

She thinks of the argument-free classrooms and annoyance-free Twitter feeds of a Gilbert-free Avonlea. She thinks of Ruby having to flirt with Charlie Sloane and Jane Andrews winning every weekly Scrabble game.

She thinks about how frustrating he is and how wrong he is ninety-eight percent of the time and how his voice miraculously seems to carry perfectly across the room whenever they're in class together.

And once -- just once, and for half of a half second -- she thinks about kissing him.

\--

The trap -- and it is most definitely a trap, because how else would it happen? -- is laid by Ruby.

Anne hosts a Story Club meeting and heads down to the kitchen at some point to brew everyone some tea. She's halfway down the stairs before she doubles back to ask if anyone wants honey or milk.

She freezes in the hallway as she catches her own name in the now-hushed conversation, creeping back to her door to hear what her friends are talking about. They were in the middle of a lively debate about the legitimacy of fanfiction when she left, so she can't see a reason for the sudden seriousness of their tones. Hidden behind the door, Anne strains to hear what's going on.

“She’s always complaining about him, though,” Diana is saying skeptically, and there's really only one person that she could be talking about.

Someone, most likely Ruby, lets out a squeal. “Exactly! That's what makes it all so perfect! It's rivalry turning into romance! Those are literally the most romantic relationships out there.”

“I don't think that happens outside of books. You’re much more likely to romantically connect with someone you actually like as a person, and I don't think that applies to Anne and Gilbert,” says Jane, and Anne nods emphatically even though no one can see her.

“You guys didn't see them the other day, though,” Josie says. "That's not how you look at someone you hate. They were looking at each other like Niall Horan looks at Harry Styles."

Anne almost turns to share a confused look with the person next to her before remembering that she's alone. From the prevailing silence in the room, she assumes that they're doing the same thing inside

“Anyway, it was like something in a movie,” says Ruby, losing none of her enthusiasm in the brief interlude. “They were arguing and it got really intense and they were all up in each other’s faces and you guys, I seriously thought they might kiss right then.”

Anne is so busy being offended by this that she barely hears Diana’s loyal defense of her intentions.

“I really don't think Anne feels that way about Gilbert at all,” says her best friend. “He seems nice, but if he really likes her, maybe the better way to show it is by respecting her wishes?”

She can hear the eye roll in Josie’s retort. “Please, Anne’s just playing hard to get. We all know she likes him.”

But Diana is undeterred. “Maybe that's how _some_ people act around the people they like, but Anne’s too honest for that. If she really liked someone, she’d be brave enough to say it to their face.”

The temptation to burst in and side with Diana is pretty strong, but instead Anne deliberately steps on the creaky floorboard outside her door, pushing open the door and pretending not to notice the sudden hush as she asks them what they want in their tea.

It’s not until later, when they’re watching a movie together, that Anne even remembers what Ruby said.

On-screen, Anne Hathaway’s character swats Chris Pine’s character with a rolled up paper mid-argument and he swats her back and then, improbably, they’re kissing. This is what Ruby thought would happen right in the middle of Miss Stacey’s classroom? _At nine-thirty in the morning?_

Anne rolls her eyes and lets out a little snort at the idea that she would ever willingly kiss Gilbert Blythe, in the heat of the moment or otherwise, and turns back to her popcorn.

(But the idea of kissing Gilbert Blythe has now entered her subconscious and there’s really no turning back.)

\--

The unthinkable happens during a debate between classes that starts out with a basic comparison of marks and ends as a heated argument over whether mason jars are pretentious.

They keep stepping closer to each other as the debate gets more intense, each one getting in their opponent’s face for rhetorical effect. Gilbert is leaning down so they’re eye to eye and Anne is looking up (yet somehow still managing to look down her nose at him) and neither of them is backing down.

As their arguments go, it’s par for the course. But then Anne makes a glib comment brushing off Gilbert’s point of view, and in the split second before he replies, she lets her gaze drop down to his lips.

She hears Ruby’s voice in her head suddenly and she can see it happening, knows that if she stood on her toes and leaned in, there’d be a very different kind of quiet than the one that she usually wishes for during these arguments.

Then the millisecond ends.

Gilbert calls her a hipster and she uses the sudden shock of embarrassment over her thoughts to come up with a particularly cutting reply, and they're off again.

\--

“I can't believe that they’d talk to a human person like that! Who does that?”

“Just let it go, Gil; we’re running late. I know it's terrible, but Diana says that it’s pretty common.”

“That’s not an excuse! You know what else is pretty common? Heart disease. Are we just going to let that slide without a fight now, too?”

Gilbert is fuming, but Anne has to try her very hardest to keep a straight face as she replies, “That depends, are you going to try to fight it with your fists or your scalpel?”

“It's not like I actually tried to start a fistfight with that guy.”

“No, but you told him he had, and I quote, ‘all the moral backbone of Jabba the Hutt’, which might count as the same thing.”

“That wasn't me starting a fight; it was a statement of fact. How else would you describe someone who refused to stock Rey merchandise because he thought she was an annoying character?”

“No one’s disagreeing with you, Gil. It’s just that maybe we can let it slide for now and deal with it some other time.”

“But it’s a systemic problem among Star Wars fans. How are we supposed to just let it go? I feel like I’d just be shirking my responsibility to-”

Anne stands on her toes to kiss Gilbert on the cheek and he falls silent.

“You called a guy Jabba the Hutt for insulting me and female characters everywhere. Consider your responsibility unshirked,” she says. “Now you can keep thinking about the rude guy at the comic shop or you can come watch an original trilogy marathon at the theater with your girlfriend, who worked very hard on this costume. Your choice.”

Gilbert looks at Anne, whose look of bemused impatience is actually adding to the effect of her Princess Leia costume. “I still can't believe you chose her Hoth costume to wear in the middle of July.”

Anne shrugs. “You know I'm a sucker for a good crown braid.”

He shakes his head, somewhere between exasperated and fond. “I love you.”

Anne grins, grabbing Gil’s Han Solo vest to pull him down for a kiss. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hardest part of this fic might have been deciding which One Direction ship would be Josie's OTP, but I powered through it and made the decision because that is how badly I wanted this Star Wars reference to exist in GGF fanon.
> 
> Thank you for reading and, as ever, let me know what you thought!


	7. like we're made of starlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of Anne and Diana friendship (with a dash of Fred/Diana) to soothe the pain that we're going to be knocked over with at any moment now.

  _"Don't you dream impossible things?"_  
Taylor Swift, "Starlight"

* * *

 

It takes Anne a long time to understand why, at first.

She doesn't come out and say it, but Diana can tell. It's in the way that she awkwardly navigates the conversation whenever they touch on Fred. She doesn't seem to know how to even begin to deal with the topic.

Anne’s not being cruel, of course. It's not like she’s actively rooting against Diana and Fred. She just...she believes in Diana. She believes in Diana and thinks extremely highly of her, which means that Anne is of the opinion that if Diana were to meet a prince or a swoony pirate or a Hemsworth brother, they would have no choice but to immediately fall for her charms.

Diana is more pragmatic on the subject -- for a long time she feels like she has to be. Sometimes she envies Anne, so confident and certain of what she deserves. On Diana’s bad days, she finds herself wondering if she should've just said yes to the first guy to ever ask her out in grade nine, because who’s to say that anyone else will ever be interested?

On the rough days, when Diana’s allowed herself to forget Anne’s strict ‘don't-say-it-to-yourself-if-you’d-never-let-someone-say-it-to-me’ advice, she calls herself a mess. On better days, she says that she has ‘a lot to work through.’ She’s busy working through it when she meets Fred.

One of the first things she learns about him is that he’s a really good friend. He’ll stay late to help you strike a set and give you his full attention whenever he talks to you and remember it when you mention in passing that your favorite musical is _Newsies_.

Between rehearsals and the classes they share, Diana and Fred spend a lot of time together. He makes her laugh and they share so many interests that they seem to fast forward through any awkwardness and kind of just fall into being friends.

At first, Diana doesn't even register the lightness that she feels whenever she sees him. He’s just a really good friend, she tells herself and Anne and anyone who asks.

They're hanging out at her house one day late in the summer when May comes into the living room and asks to be dealt into their card game. Diana, who rarely excludes May from anything, panics and tries to think of some way to distract her little sister so that Fred won't feel awkward having to hang out with a little kid.

Before she can say anything, though, Fred is re-shuffling the deck and talking animatedly to May about the robin’s eggs that she saw in the backyard yesterday. It's not even the bored fake interest that Diana sometimes breaks out when she’s tired or has a lot of work to do; he really cares about what May is saying, and Diana’s sister is basking in the attention.

Diana watches them for a moment, content, before May turns to her and asks a question about some vacation they took last year.

“It was Prince Edward Island,” Diana says, smiling at Fred over May’s head. “They have a town called Avonlea, too.”

Then Fred deals three hands of cards and explains the rules to May, and as her sister gleefully joins their game, all Diana can think is that maybe her 'just a good friend' defense isn't going to hold up anymore.

She doesn't say anything to anyone, not for a while. She tells herself that it's just a silly little crush and it'll be gone before she even gets around to mentioning it to anyone, but that doesn't happen. It just stays there in the background as Diana tries to ignore it and does everything in her power to keep her grade twelve experience normal and unspoiled by the fact that she's developed feelings for one of her best friends.

But denial only makes her hyper-aware every time she interacts with him. Every high five and shared glance becomes an exercise in precision timing, every laugh a balancing act between real amusement and too-real feelings. 

In spite of it all, she can't even manage to keep it a secret from Anne, who _lives in another city_. Her best friend opens a Skype call in October with a pointed, “So have you told Fred about your feelings yet?”

Diana does everything that Anne expects her to do: she turns red, repeatedly denies everything, and then finally concedes that Anne’s right. Satisfied that her suspicions turned out to be true, Anne changes the subject and Diana thinks nothing of it.

Then it happens on the next call, and again on the call after that. Diana, in need of someone to rant to about her balancing act, can barely say Fred’s name before Anne brings something else up.

She finally sorts things out in November. It's not in Diana’s nature to be confrontational, but she tells herself that if anyone in her life always encourages her to be assertive, it's Anne. Diana broaches the subject of Fred off-camera and makes her case.

Anne, to her credit, insists that Diana liking him is enough to put her on Team Fred, but all she gets in return is, “Please just let me keep talking because I can't say any of this to a friend who isn't you.”

So Anne holds back all of her suggestions for getting over someone and instead lets a rapidly pacing Diana explain why Fred is exactly the kind of person she wants in her life.

When she’s done, she flops facedown onto Anne’s bed. “Why me?” she asks. Her voice is muffled by the bedspread. “Why him? It could have been literally anyone. Why him?”

Anne pats Diana’s arm. “Maybe it's fate.”

Diana turns her head to Anne, looking as skeptical as a person can with their face half hidden behind a floral bedcover. “If this is fate, then fate is the worst. I want to talk to fate’s manager and file a complaint.”

Anne imitates Diana and flops down on the bed beside her. She gives Diana’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. “I’ll pass on your request to my superiors.”

“Thank you.”

“So do you want some ice cream?”

“Yes, please,” Diana says into the quilt.

Anne stands up, smoothing out her clothes. “Chocolate or salted caramel?”

Diana lifts up her head again and fixes Anne with a look.

“Both. Got it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As they say on _Friday Night Lights_ , "Clear eyes, hearts full of happy fic, Ruby definitely can't lose." Or something like that.


	8. dust off your highest hopes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, y'all, what better way to honor Ruby than to write fic about the first couple she ever publicly shipped? 
> 
> Not that there's any reason to honor her because she's fine, we're fine, everything's fine. ~~Nothing's fine.~~

_"Your eyes look like coming home."_  
Taylor Swift  & Ed Sheeran, "Everything Has Changed"

* * *

 

It’s probably bad luck, Tristan realizes in retrospect, to tell yourself that planning a conversational segue on notecards will ensure that nothing will go wrong. He doesn't believe in jinxes, really, but he does believe in Murphy’s Law most days. He’d just been hoping it wouldn't kick in.

Try as he might, notecards be damned, he just can't bring himself to steer the subject to where he wants it to be. Instead, Tristan has two false starts, lies and says that he thought he heard a knock, and then cops out by asking Jane how her job at the school newspaper is going.

She’s pleased that he remembered, launching into a story on how she’s tracking down some leads on a story about cheating rings in the medical school. It sounds like the exact thing she's dreamed of doing and he can't help but praise her for it.

In characteristic Jane Andrews fashion, she shrugs a shoulder and downplays it. “It sounds more dramatic than it is. Mostly they just text in class, except instead of being in class they're in an exam and instead of texting it's Snapchat.”

“Snapchat?” Tristan asks. “Really?”

“I guess it's good that the app isn't exclusively for really inappropriate pictures anymore. They're diversifying.”

“I don't think allowing aspiring doctors to defraud the system is going to be a marketing plus point for them.”

“Depends on who you're marketing it to,” Jane deadpans, and Tristan laughs.

She has to go pretty soon after that, and it's only after Jane ends their call that Tristan lets his head drop onto the desk, landing squarely on his now-useless pile of notecards.

“I am singularly _terrible_ at this,” he says to his empty dorm room.

“Terrible at what, bro?” replies the room -- or rather, his roommate Robbie, who stands in the doorway.

“It's not important,” Tristan says, sitting up and gathering his notecards. He tries for a polite deflection. “So how was, uh, lacrosse practice?”

“Same as it always is,” says Robbie, crossing the room to his own desk where he turns his chair to face Tristan. “But that's not important right now, because I'm always here for a bro who needs help, and right now, man, you _are_ that bro.”

Tristan blinks. It always takes an extra few seconds to figure out what Robbie is saying when he’s gripped by a sense of fraternity. “That is...very kind of you to say?”

“‘Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny,’” Robbie says sagely. Tristan is fairly certain that he’s quoting someone but he’s not sure who. “It's my job as your roommate to help you be extraordinary, mi amigo. Think of me as the Panza to your Quixote.”

“I’m not sure that’s an apt simile,” says Tristan. “Sancho Panza didn’t do much to prevent Don Quixote from being so...er, quixotic.”

“But he was there for the journey, dude. He supported his buddy when he went to find his Romantic-with-a-big-R destiny and I’m here to help you find your romantic-with-a-little-r destiny.”

(When Tristan first met Robbie, he’d been certain that his roommate would be just like all the other classmates he’d never been able to connect with. The baseball cap -- or ‘snapback’, as he later learned to call it -- and framed Baltimore Ravens jersey had done very little to dispel this idea. It wasn’t until later, when Tristan saw Robbie on the quad talking to someone in a fake feathered headdress -- “Cultural appropriation is decidedly un-chill, dude. Do you know how much systematic oppression the Native Americans have faced in this country?” -- that he realized there may have been more to his roommate than he initially assumed.)

First semester Tristan would have been unsure of whether this whole exchange was meant to poke fun at him, but now he knows Robbie well enough to understand that it’s a gesture of friendship.

He holds up the index cards. "I was just trying to tell Jane something and I couldn't precisely find the right time to do it."

As it turns out, there is no point in trying to be vague about it, because Robbie literally _pumps his fist_ as if Tristan is a teammate of his who's just scored a goal. "You're finally gonna tell your lady love how you feel?"

"How-" Tristan starts to ask, but Robbie is still talking.

"I'm glad you decided to say something, man. Live your truth, you know? You can't just be bottling things up and trying to script the perfect moment. You just gotta let life happen." Robbie pauses, either for effect or because he's gotten swept up in his own motivational speech. "So what are the cards for, bro?"

Tristan puts the cards back on his desk and tucks them under his laptop sleeve. "Nothing. They're nothing," he says, shaking his head.

Robbie shrugs. "So are you going to tell her this weekend?"

"What? Why this weekend?"

"Because she's going to be here," Robbie says slowly. Realization dawns across his face. "Oh, dude, she probably wanted it to be a surprise! I'm sorry; I just thought she told you. She RSVP-ed to the _Gazette_ 's college journalism conference. She's like, UBC's ace reporter, so they made her their delegate."

Part of Tristan remembers belatedly that Robbie writes for _The Gazette_ 's philosophical advice column, 'Aristotle Answers'. For a moment, though, all he hears in his head is white noise. "Jane is coming here?" he croaks.

He gets a nod in reply. "Jane Andrews, right? They put me on the international RSVPs. She sent hers in weeks ago."

"I think I need to sit down."

It's a testament to Robbie's kindness that he just nods at the already-sitting Tristan and says, "You do that, buddy."

* * *

Friday morning finds Tristan waiting with Robbie and his _Gazette_ -issued name cards at Logan Airport's arrivals terminal.

Tristan is pacing when Robbie claps his roommate on the shoulder. "Bro, if she's flying seven hours on a weekend, it's not for some college newspaper conference. You got this."

Tristan nods, stilling with a shake of his head. "Thank you, Sancho," he says, with a small grin.

"No problem, Quixote," says Robbie. "And, uh, speaking of, I think I might see her." 

Which is all the warning that Tristan gets before he has an armful of Jane Andrews.

He is not, until this precise second, a hugger. Maybe it's that he's never really been far from the people that he cares about or maybe it's just his personality, but when Jane drops her bags at their feet and hugs him impulsively, he's braced for discomfort but instead a part of him just thinks, 'Oh, there you are.'

Then Jane whispers, "Missed you," before she lets him go, and for a brief moment, Tristan feels euphoric enough to even ignore Robbie's teasing grin and double thumbs up behind her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys probably don't care but the people on Tristan and Robbie's floor 100% refer to them respectively as "No Chill" and "So Chill".


	9. can you feel this magic in the air?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I cheated a little bit.
> 
> Originally, this song came up on shuffle and I had absolutely no good ideas for it and I kept coming up with half-formed ones and abandoning them and then I decided that this was all a problem for future me to deal with, so I ignored it until I finished chapter 8.
> 
> Future me obviously didn't want the responsibility either, so she turned to Netflix and watched a movie called Begin Again, and this idea was born. So...it's a _Begin Again_ fusion inspired in part by a Taylor Swift song, but not the song called "Begin Again". Just to be clear. I hope you enjoy it!

_'Fell in love when I saw you standing there.'_  
Taylor Swift, "Today Was a Fairytale"

* * *

 

She changes her outfit four times. First it looks too formal, and then she looks too casual, and then she wonders if she’s putting too much thought into it, so she changes back.

(There’s even a point where she reaches into her closet to pull out something green that looks promising, except that it turns out to be that dress from her video with Roy and the peonies. She basically flings it across the room, like she’ll somehow be forced to wear it if it’s near her for too long. It seems like a good idea in the split second when she chooses to do it, but then the dress knocks a book off her nightstand and almost takes a lamp with it and she’s just glad no one was here to see it.)

Then she has all these plans for what she might like to do with her hair, but all the costume changes put her behind schedule, so she barely has enough time to finish braiding it before Gil rings the doorbell.

Half an hour later, when she’s mired in stilted conversation at an ice cream shop, Anne thinks that it all might have been a sign.

\--

He’s not sure what exactly went wrong here. It’s all just... _off_ , somehow.

Usually, talking to Anne is the easiest thing in the world. Today, everything he says comes out awkward or uninspired and the conversation keeps ending before it’s even started. Their ice cream cups are sweating and the sun shows no sign of letting up and Gilbert knows that this is not how a good date is supposed to go.

As he watches Anne fiddle with the bracelet on her wrist, Gilbert reminds himself of two important facts. Anne Shirley is his best friend and he is in love with her. The universe is rooting for them, he’s pretty sure. Ruby Gillis is somewhere up there, and if she has as much pull in the afterlife as she did in Avonlea, then there’s no way that this can’t work. He just has to do something about it.

“I’m sorry,” Gil says suddenly. Anne looks up at him. “This is horrible and awkward, isn’t it?”

She winces. “Um...a little?”

At least she’s being honest. “Do you want to go home?”

Anne shakes her head. “No! No, I want to try this properly. I just- I think maybe the ice cream place with the four year old baseball players was a rough place to start.”

“Okay. I can work with that,” he says to her. Gil is cobbling together a plan on his feet and the last piece falls into place as he catches sight of shop a few doors down.  “Give me five minutes, and when I get back, we’re going to start over. And Shirley? I guarantee it’s going to be the best date you’ve ever been on.”

He hurries away in the direction of the other store before Anne can say anything else.

\--

She checks her phone while he’s gone, fixes her hair in the front camera and checks for ice cream smudges on her face. She's about to reapply her lipstick when a text message appears on her forehead.

It's from Josie, a ‘good luck tonite!!!!’ with a sparkly gem emoji at the end. It's not something that Josie would have ever sent on her own, but there’s one person who would have wanted to see this day more than anyone else, and Josie won't let her go unacknowledged.

By the time Anne texts back, Gilbert reappears, looking determined and carrying...a drawstring?

He approaches the table and knocks on it ceremoniously. Anne rolls her eyes a little but gets up and mimes opening the door anyway.

“Hi, Gil,” she says, grinning.

“Hi, Shirley,” he says. “It's good to see you. I love what you've done with the place.”

Anne gestures around her to the patio of the ice cream shop. “It's nice, right? I was going for a natural, outdoorsy vibe.”

“I think it really works,” Gilbert says. “Quick question: do you have your headphones on you?”

“I- what?” Anne pauses and rifles through her purse to check. She finds them somehow wrapped around her house keys and threaded through her wallet, but they're there. “Yes, yes I do. Why?”

“This may be a weird idea, and there was a lot of morphine in my system when I came up with it, but bear with me, okay?” he says.

Anne nods her assent.

“So I watched this movie, once with Ruby and once when I was in the hospital, and there's this kind of cheesy moment in it when two characters just walk around the city and get to know each other by listening to music. I know Avonlea isn't New York City, and I know there's not a lot of hidden stuff to be discovered here, but we keep stumbling over our words, so I thought maybe we could let someone else do the talking?”

Gilbert says it all so quickly that it takes Anne a second to catch up, but when she gets there, a grin spreads across her face. “Your music or mine?”

He grins back at her, the tension shaking out of his shoulders. “Yours? I'm sure your music is too obscure for me to mock.”

“If there's anything embarrassing on here, you will never find it,” she says confidently. “So how does this work?”

He holds up the thing that he just bought -- it's a jack splitter, Anne realizes. They hook it up to her phone and attach their headphones, and Gil chooses the first song, holding the phone as close to him as humanly possible so that Anne can't cheat and see what's coming.

There’s a half second of quiet before Anne hears the opening notes of ‘Bella Notte’ from _Lady and the Tramp_.

“Excellent first choice, Mr. Blythe.”

“Why, thank you, Miss Shirley.”

\--

They eat pretzels the size of their faces to the sounds of Bloc Party while Slow Club plays on their way to Starbucks. Frank Sinatra serenades them as they browse the old fashioned candy counter at Lawson’s and Anne’s favorite Lumineers song is playing when they walk into the used book store near the high school.

Each song comes with a story from the person who chose it, from sweet childhood memories to the time that a full-scale rebellion was mounted on the playground and none of the teachers could figure out how to control it.

They’re still in the bookshop when Anne’s next pick -- an Ingrid Michaelson song that was playing on the radio when she had her first kiss -- begins to fade out. She and Gilbert are so busy browsing the titles in the classic fiction section that neither one of them remembers to queue up a new song, so the phone does it for them.

The final ukulele strum fades to silence and even as the first few notes of the next song play, neither Anne nor Gilbert realizes that anything is amiss.

Then Harry Styles starts singing.

Gilbert turns to look at Anne, jaw hanging open. His face is the picture of surprise and delight, but she doesn’t notice, because her deer-in-the-headlights face has her staring unseeingly at a yellowing copy of _Pericles, Prince of Tyre_. He waits for an explanation.

“The lyrics are excellent, okay?” she finally blurts. “Ed Sheeran wrote them, and I love Ed Sheeran’s songwriting because it’s so filled with visual imagery, so why wouldn’t I like this song? It’s still written by him; that’s why I have it.”

He smiles. “You don’t have to explain anything to me, you know. You’re allowed to like whatever music you want. Who cares if other people like it, too?”

“Plus, they’re talented live vocalists,” Anne says, more to herself than to him.

“Plus, they’re talented live vocalists,” repeats a bemused Gilbert. “I don’t remember seeing One Direction listed in your music, though. How’d you hide the song?”

Anne looks at the ground. “I listed it as a bonus track on _Multiply_ so it looked like Ed Sheeran was the singer and then I changed the cover to match.”

“That is dedication.”

“It is,” Anne says. “And maybe one day I’ll tell people what exists in the depths of my music library, but for now, you are the only other person who knows about this, so if the story leaks, I’ll know who to blame.”

Gilbert holds his hands up in surrender. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Good.”

And she might be playing scary exceptionally well, but they walk out of the store with their fingers interlaced, and Gilbert thinks that he may have just passed some kind of test.  
  
\--

  
“...and it’s been nineteen years, and I still don’t know any of the lyrics," Gilbert is saying as they walk out of the Gray Memorial Garden. The song changes over and he looks down at Anne. "That's your cue."

"Oh, right," Anne says. She waits a moment, letting the vocals kick in before she starts. "This is 'Shake' by The Head and the Heart. It's the song that was playing when I got my first glimpse of Avonlea."

He raises his eyebrows. "How do you even remember that?"

"My social worker was driving me here, and, uh, I may have annoyed her by asking too many questions? So she strongly suggested that I take a nap or listen to some music for the rest of the ride. The album was new and it was really good and it seemed like the thing to listen to at the time. This song was playing when I got my first look at the lake."

"And what did you think?"

"It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen," Anne says simply. "I know that sounds kind of silly, especially if you grew up here, but I'd never seen anything like it. The lake was perfectly frozen over and all the trees were glazed with ice and it looked a little bit like Narnia."

It occurs to Gilbert then that in spite of his friendship with Anne, he knows very little about her life before she came to Avonlea. He hopes that he’s around long enough to change that. "So has the charm worn off yet?"

Anne stops in her tracks to look at him. "Seriously?" She spreads her arms wide, gesturing to the street that they're standing on, lined on both sides with apple trees in full bloom that form a canopy above them. "I think there's plenty of charm left, Gilbert."

She holds her hand out to him and they start walking again.

Gilbert shrugs a shoulder. "You live in a big city now. I just thought that maybe Toronto might have stolen your heart," he says.

"Toronto is great, and I love Redmond and the friends that I’ve made there, but this is different. Avonlea is special. Y- _Avonlea_ feels like home," Anne says slowly."And I think it’s fair to say that Avonlea should count on holding onto my heart for a while."

It’s not completely dark yet, and it’s exactly the sort of thing that would set the town busybodies off for the next three weeks, but Gilbert kisses Anne right then and there, under the cherry tree that marks the edge of the Lynde property. He rests his forehead against hers and manages to say with a composure that he definitely doesn't feel, "I'm sure Avonlea will be glad to hear it."

Anne just kisses him again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Have you all watched _Begin Again_? You should.
> 
> 2) Is there a full length playlist of the songs that Anne and Gil listened to on their date from whence I cherrypicked my references? Maybe.
> 
> 3) Is there a point in this fic where I unabashedly take my cues from _Parks and Recreation_? Definitely.
> 
> 4) Is there really just one more chapter left before we're all free of this fic? Yes! 
> 
> Thank you for making it this far if you have, and let me know what you think or throw outlandish suggestions for the next chapter at me in the comments. You never know what'll make it into the final draft.


	10. i don't know what to be without you around

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said I'd finish this fic in two weeks and instead I ended up taking seven months? That was fun.

_"You're the only thing I know like the back of my hand."_  
Taylor Swift, "Breathe"

* * *

 “Shirley, are you staring at me again?”

Gilbert and Anne lie side by side in the grass. At some point they were watching the clouds, but Anne has found herself more than a little distracted and it seems like Gil can sense her even with his eyes closed.

She pretends that she isn't blushing and answers haughtily, “I wasn't _staring_. I was just looking at the roses and you happened to be in the way.”

He opens his eyes and grins at her. “Am I interrupting a moment between you and the flowers, Carrots? Do you want me to leave?”

“I guess you can stick around until all these flowers finally inspire a sestina or something,” Anne says, fighting a grin.

Gilbert nods solemnly. “I promise I'll leave as soon as you start your first acrostic.”

Anne actually sits up at that, gasping in offense. “Gilbert Blythe, I have never written anything as childish as an acrostic poem and I certainly never will.”

He shrugs, bracing his arms behind his head and closing his eyes again. “Then I guess I'm not going anywhere.”

Gil looks incredibly pleased with himself for how smoothly he carried off that line, but the effect is marred by a leaf landing squarely on his face.

Anne laughs and reaches out to move it and-

She jerks awake in an uncomfortable chair, her neck cramped and her elbow sore. Her arm is still reaching out slightly and she drops it, glancing around self-consciously. Nobody seems to have noticed, but then people in hospital waiting rooms all probably have their own problems to focus on.

Phil isn’t around and Anne panics for a second, wondering if there’s been some news about Gil and she missed it. She’s about to jump up and start looking for a doctor when Phil comes around the corner holding two cups of coffee.

“You’re up already?” she asks as she sits down. “I was trying not to bother you.”

Anne mechanically takes the cup that Phil holds out, though she doesn't want it at all. “How long was I asleep? Did I miss anything?”

“Don't panic, okay? It was just a few minutes, and nothing happened.” She takes a sip of the coffee and wrinkles her nose. “I just thought it might be good for you to get a little rest in case something changed later and you needed to be up.”

“I’m sorry,” Anne says quickly. “I’m just worried and none of this makes sense and I wish they’d just let us go see him because I just need to know that he’s okay.”

“He’s going to be fine,” says Phil firmly. Then she adds, “I mean, I'm going to lecture him for at least two hours on bicycle safety and why you should never be on the road while sleep deprived, but physically, he’ll be fine.”

Anne is too busy staring at her coffee cup to muster a smile. Her hands, she’s just noticed, won't stop shaking.

She looks down at them, feeling for a second like they're not hers at all. They won't do what she tells them to.

As the night stretches on, Phil is the one who has to dial Gil’s parents, and she’s the one who steadies Anne’s coffee when it sloshes over the rim of the cup, and she’s the one who grips Anne’s hand tight as the doctors deliver their updates.

Phil is the one who guides Anne out of the hospital to a waiting taxi when they're kicked out.

Phil does everything, and Anne? Anne cannot stop staring at her suddenly useless hands.

\------

Everybody is there to meet them when they get back. Stella’s arms are open for a hug and Priscilla and Blake hold mugs of chamomile tea. There’s a flurry of quiet questions, all of which get answered by someone with a dull, faraway voice. It takes Anne a second to realize that that voice is hers.

They guide her to the couch and she lets them, not protesting when Priscilla tucks a blanket -- her precious TARDIS one, no less -- around her shoulders or when Stella forces her to take a mug of tea.

Everyone is sharing stories of miraculous post-accident recovery. Priscilla helped out at a hospital last summer and saw a woman survive a car accident _and_ a subsequent lightning strike. Stella knows someone who knows someone who was trampled by her horse and came out with just a minor sprain. Anne only half-listens, offering weak smiles where she’s supposed to and nodding when it's appropriate.

Across the room, Blake talks quietly to Phil in a corner. She pulls her girlfriend into a tight hug, pressing a kiss to her hair, and Anne suddenly feels so, so cold.

She stands up and excuses herself, waves off Stella’s concern with the assurance that she just needs to sleep, then goes to her room and doesn't sleep for a second.

It's still too big for her to process, somehow. Her head spins when she tries. She has to break it up into pieces, start with something she can understand and work her way up.

Gilbert is hurt, she tells herself. That much, she can handle. People get hurt all the time.

Gilbert is injured, she thinks. Gilbert is injured and it was bad enough that he had to visit the hospital. She can make it that far without trouble, too.

Gilbert was in an accident, she tells herself, and her instinct is to think that it was a long time coming. He sometimes gets too caught up in his thoughts to see right in front of him. Anne remembers him walking right into a lamppost once because he was so excitedly discussing some book he’d just read, and she almost laughs at the memory before she catches herself.

Gilbert might be gone forever, she tells herself, and the entire world pitches forward.

She jumps out of bed and digs through her stuff, suddenly desperate to find the stuffed cat that Gilbert gave her when she had to give up Rusty. She tucks him into the blanket beside her, but it doesn't do any good because the stuffed cat is just a ridiculous stuffed cat and it occurs to Anne that the only person in the world who might do her any good in this situation is Gilbert. All she wants to hear right now is a terrible pun or a weirdly specific factoid or- God, just the sound of him talking about absolutely nothing because that would mean that he's okay.

Anne reaches for her phone and taps through until she's on her own YouTube channel, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling until she sees the thumbnail from exactly two years ago and hits play. It's not healthy or productive; she knows that. It's just that she can't stop. She traces Gil's presence in her videos and her life, from the unending rants to his dashing rescue to her unequivocal refusal to accept his apology. She watches him reach for her hand time after time and she curls her own empty one into a fist.

She notices now that she never seemed to shut up about him. So many of her videos start off in one place and manage to come back around to Gilbert Blythe and how terrible he is. It only escalates when he actually starts making appearances in her videos. She rages at him on camera and insists that she doesn't want him around, but keeps him in every video that he walks into. She didn't know, back then, how to pull their relationship out of limbo, but she still knew that she wanted him around.

Her plan is to skip 'Memories' because it's too hard to watch, but none of the earlier Redmond videos are any easier. She can see it in Gil's eyes: the way that he looked at her changed at some point in that unfilmed summer. He does his best to be a good friend above anything else, and it may have fooled her in the fall but it's just so easy to see now. She makes herself watch the moment that Gil walks out of her life, watches in humiliation as her past self parades Roy around on camera and fools herself into thinking that an excess of awe can pass for love. Then Ruby passes away and in the midst of all that pain, Anne and Gilbert somehow find their way back to each other.

It's her closing argument to the universe: proof that Gilbert Blythe is an inextricable part of her life, an anchor that she can't haul up just yet. They pushed and pulled and willingly walked away and still, they found their way back. They found their way back and this time, _she_ reached for _him_ , because-

Anne sits straight up, her eyes wide. The stuffed cat goes flying and her phone lands in her lap with a thud as she drops it to clap a hand to her mouth.

She reached for him because his friendship means the world to her, because he makes her better, because he challenges her and respects her and makes her laugh until her sides hurt.

She reached for him because somehow he's become the exact person that she knows she needs in her life.

This time, she reached for him, because _she's in love with Gilbert Blythe_.

\------

The next day at the hospital, she holds his hand and reads to him from his favorite book. He doesn't respond -- he may be out of the woods, but he's in a lot of pain and the morphine keeps him under most of the time -- but she imagines that he'd appreciate the gesture. (Mr. Blythe certainly does.)

It's only when they're leaving in the evening that Anne notices it. She's carried coffee cups and books and flowers all day, but it's not until she's sitting there with Gilbert that she realizes what's happening.

Her hands aren't shaking anymore. In his hands, they feel like hers again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Angelica Schuyler voice] _"At least I keep his ~~eeeeeeeyessssss~~ haaaaaaaaaaands in my life."_
> 
> Am I a terrible person? Probably. Let me know if I got you with the little fluffy fakeout at the beginning there or if this ten-chapter journey has taught you that my work requires a healthy dose of skepticism.
> 
> \----
> 
> On a wider note, congratulations! You've made it to the end of a long, long journey. Thanks for sticking it out with me, and for all your lovely words and kudos and bookmarks. It made this so much more worthwhile to know that people were enjoying my weird little vignettes in this fictional world.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter and this series as a whole, because I certainly had fun writing it. Thanks again for reading and, as ever, let me know what you thought!


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